During visual reference flight (VMC), aircraft pilots often use landmarks (e.g., a mountain peak) on the horizon to help guide them to a destination. Such visual landmarks provide situation awareness. FIG. 1 and FIG. 2 schematically illustrate a pilot 10 viewing a landmark 12 through an aircraft windshield 14 during VMC. As known to those skilled in the art, pilot 10 has a field-of-view 16 defined by windshield 14. Landmark 12 is illustratively shown as a city located at the horizon 18 of ground 20 as viewed from pilot 10. In FIG. 2, earth's ground 20 is shown illustratively as grid lines 22 to provide a perspective view that a distant ground object (e.g., a ground square 24) is smaller than a closer ground object of the same size (e.g., a ground square 26).
When flying under instrument reference flight (IMC), these landmarks are no longer available. Pilots instead typically divide their attention between separate devices that provide the primary flight display or attitude indication and flight navigation data. Pilots do not therefore have clear situational awareness of the direction to the next waypoint on their primary flight display or attitude indicator. Viewing the separate devices also makes safe monitoring of each flight function difficult. Moreover, the information from these devices or displays does not visually simulate the horizon views normally seen by the pilot during VMC, providing further physiological disconnect between instrument and visual reference flight. FIG. 3 shows a representative prior art aircraft instrument panel 30 with multiple displays and devices, including attitude indicators 32 and navigation display 34. As illustrated, devices 32, 34 do not provide information conforming to what pilot 10 sees during VMC of FIG. 1 and FIG. 2; for example, the horizon is shown as a single line 36 on navigation display 34.